Enter the Large, Wide, Nuanced Gate

"A point I frequently try to make, around here, is that Catholicism is too large, too wide, too nuanced, too small-c-catholic to permit ideological purity. Catholic politicians or ideologues who manage such “purity” have always had to betray a tenet of Catholicism to get to that place." 

"Always." So says The Anchoress, also known as Elizabeth "Lizzie" Scalia, big chief blogger at the Patheos.com catholic "portal". (Portal? to where? --Ed.) You might be surprised to find she's talking about conservative ideological purity which she claims exists on the right, and which, she seems to argue, sullies the soul of conservative Catholics everywhere. (It seems Elizabeth really, really, really doesn't like conservatives, so don't call her one.) Intrigued by her premise -- well, ok, more like baffled -- I pressed her about which Catholic tenets conservative politicians are busy betraying. The only example she could muster up was illegal immigration, citing conservatives' "absolute reluctance to consider the illegal immigrant as a human being, first and foremost". Right. I guess harboring monstrous thoughts that humans are not, in fact, human, would betray Catholic tenets. But even assuming it's true that conservatives betray tenets by being monstrous, does The Anchoress brand of "large, wide, nuanced" catholicism really teach that I can break any civil law I darn well please, without consequence, because I am a "human being, first and foremost"? Or would that only be true if I had brown skin and were from a poor country? I and others asked The Anchoress for clarification on that point, but this led her to accuse us of "bullying" and "refusing to engage". Then she disappeared the thread. (If this sounds familiar, note that Elizabeth Scalia hired one Mark Shea also to blog at the Patheos "portal".)

In a similar incident, The Anchoress (some of her followers refer to her as "dear Anchoress") indirectly but unmistakably referred to political conservatives as "Ameridolators". I can't really accuse her of trashing conservatives outright. She doesn't do that. What she does do is imply and suggest that they suck and aren't good Catholics. When called out on this, she refused to define the term "Ameridolator", explaining only that she uses it as a "portmanteau" -- which means "large suitcase" in french. The Anchoress is more right than she knows. The term conveniently hides the left's hideous mischaracterizations of conservative thought in her musty "portmanteau", and sneaks them into the "large, wide, nuanced" brand of Patheos-brand catholicism. Of course, the portmanteau explanation clarified nothing, and things only got muddier. The Anchoress proceeded to make a bizarre distinction between "sacred" and "holy", stating "The constitution, for instance, is a 'sacred' document, but it's not holy." When I confessed that I didn't follow this line of reasoning, she …. yes! you guessed it! She shut down the thread. I believe she also stated that dealing with my comments made her "tired".

So, Elizabeth "The Anchoress" Scalia really doesn't like conservatives, but either refuses to tell us why, or sneakily hides what she must know are irrational biases in her "portmanteau". One might think such intellectual bankruptcy unworthy of someone who regularly writes for the First Things website, as The Anchoress is apparently paid to do. Founding editor John Neuhaus was content to identify himself as a political conservative, and clearly believed his conservatism was totally congruent with his religious ideals. In fact, explaining this congruence was the reason he founded First Things, a publication whose stated purpose is "to advance a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society." Therefore one has to wonder why the First Things website features someone like The Anchoress, who is not only unwilling to engage with politically conservative ideas, but brandishes her "large" "wide" "nuanced" religion as an all-purpose excuse to blow them off.